Morning Mates, from a dull and foggy Pictou County. Yesterday around noon a ginat fog rolled in and it's still hanging around. Dull, wet weather is the order for this weekend, but at least it's still relatively warm (17C or 62F).

I'm up early again, off to volunteer for the Y at a community event to raise awareness and funds for a new "Wellness Centre" being built. The new centre will include the YMCA, and a large childcare centre where I hope to be working by this time next year, so I'll do what I can to help out.I did mange to get the afternoon off from the other volunteer job, so I can get some housework and other stuff done. Sometimes there's just not enough hours in the day!

By the way, if you are in the Buffalo WNED PBS area, did you happen to catch the Justin Hines "Days to Recall" music special on PBS last night?I've seen it before (at 4 a.m.!) on another PBS station, and it is WONDERFUL! Justin is my favourite artist and he is now finally breaking into the US market after wowing Canada and the world for almost 5 years.Check your local PBS stations for repeats of this fantastic show!

It's still kinda dark here in Patzcuaro. Mexico. The weather is partly mostly due to the hurricane off of the coast, in the state of Guerrera. We went to a comida in celebration of David's birthday yesterday evening. We had Pozole and some delicious pastel de chocolate for dessert. It was a fun party with about 20 of our friends here in Mexico attending.

Tomorrow we start packing all of our belongings for the move into the new casa. We will officially be moving October 5th, mas y menos. We are so excited but only wish for magic wands to complete the tasks at hand. UGH!

You know Donna, I'm only going to grill a ribeye and have a baked potato and brussel sprouts and for me these days, that's a feast. Being alone, I don't have the appetite nor the desire to fix big meals such as I used to do every Sunday. Some days I actually have to make myself eat something and I'm not always successful at that. Today when I got up I told myself I had to eat a balanced meal whether I wanted to or not, hence the steak came out of the freezer.

There is still a lot to do in the house but with just some regular cleaning I'm getting to the stage (at least the house is getting to the stage) where I can have company and I hope to start having friends over for dinner, etc.

Chuck, I am a kindrid spirit when it comes to the efforts of moving. The next time I move is when they put me in the box. I absolutely love my home but even if I didn't, I couldn't go through that process again. Packing and moving my books alone and disregarding everything else, I .... well, can't even contemplate such a task. Last weekend when the girls were here and cleared out all of Fran's stuff and basically gave me my house back, I figured I have more books that even I thought.

Yesterday we made over $3,200 at our road block fund raiser and the support our Humane Society receives locally is nothing short of phenomenal, especially when one considers this county has over 14% unemployment and wages in this part of the country are virtually peanuts anyway. I worked the busiest intersection and at least fifty people whom I of course didn't know, took the time to express their sadness about my losing Fran including even a guy in a big rig who dropped a ten spot into my bucket. I was just stunned.

Well, it's going to be a pretty and warm day here in upper East Tennessee and I hope that all of my beloved cruisemates, regardless of their weather, have a marvelous Sunday.

Prayers for those on the list and of course a prayer for Blessings upon all continue.

I've been up since 5:30 a.m.. I was awakened by an alarm chime from Betty's laptop. The firewall had detected an outgoing connection attempt to a blacklisted site. She had taken a friends recommendation and downloaded a game. The game had a key logger embedded in it and it was trying to connect to the "mother site" and dump its information.

It took me an hour to clean that up and after that there was no way to go back to sleep.

Yesterday was a productive day and I was proud of my new plumber. Her name is Betty. A few months ago I installed new toilets in the house but one of them never worked right. Finally, after a lot of emailing, Kohler sent us a whole new toilet. Betty got it in her head that yesterday "she" was going to install it. I can't lift more than ten pounds so I was a bit miffed that she started this task. Well: working together and I'll admit I did bit more than I should have but Betty did all the heavy lifting and we swapped the toilets and cleaned everything up in about an 1.5 hours.

There really isn't too much on the agenda for today. We may do some garage clean up but I would prefer to be back in shape before we really tackle that job since there is a lot of stuff we want to get rid of. Then again, I've seen some people's garages and compared to them we don't have too much to get rid of. I cannot understand how people can have a garage stuffed full and their cars sit in the driveway.

I hope everyone has a great Sunday and a wonderful upcoming week.

Take care,
Mike

__________________Cruisemates Community Leader/Moderator

"There is a great difference between being well traveled and just having been to many places." ~Me

Good morningA little chilly in the house this morning so I turned on the heat just to take out the chill. We’re going out for our anniversary dinner tonight to Bob Chinn’s, a great sea food restaurant.I have been looking for a good pair of water shoes to climb Dunn’s river falls and due to my never ending bad foot I need more of a gym shoe type with support. Luckily I wandered in to Lands End and found a very nice pair and they were on clearance, they look just like a gym shoe! Not much else going on here, have a great day!

Good morning from a breezy Texas, where it will be in the high 90's later today.

Mike, I have been working on the garage since Jim left. Bought new cabinets, and threw away a ton of stuff. Jim grew up with 4 brothers and sisters, in a family where there was love but not much else. He was taught to hold on to anything, incase it was needed later. We spent 20 years in the military, where we were below the poverty level, so it continued. Now that we are more comfortable, he has a hard time letting go. I try to organize it everytime he deploys, but this time, I will have completed the task. I think it will look good. I bought the Craftsman stand up cabinets, one for hunting, one for fishing, and one for tools. I sure hope he can enjoy it.

Keith and I returned from MN yesterday. It was not a pleasant trip for many reasons. Some were our own mistakes, such as staying too far away from Mother's care facility and also getting lost. But the worst was the stress of seeing Mother in her present condition along with all the other residents suffering in various stages of Dementia. I will write more about it later.

I still have unpacking to do and I must also go to the store for breakfast makings.

Another rainy day looms for Virginia Beach; rain, rain, go away!. Not much on the agenda for today. After talking to the kids I went out a bought the Sunday paper. (I just get it for the coupons and sales). In an hour-and-a-half, I will leave for work. Todd I'd love to try your ribeye steak; sounds great! Have a great day, fellow cruisemates!